The Emperor of Paris (19 page)

And yet you say you have not travelled, I said. Not so far, he repeated. Then how do you know? With these, he said, waving his hands at the glass cases.

I had no idea madame, Isabeau said. What a wonderful story.

With not much of an ending I’m afraid, Madame T said. My parents had died when I was young and I had been on my own for a long time. A chance meeting in a little bookshop had brought me out of myself. It made me fall in love and took me across the world with no more effort than walking across a room. But it was all such a fragile thing.

Madame T collected herself.

My gentleman would come to the city every weekend. One Saturday morning he did not step off the train. I waited on the platform for hours. He never arrived. For days I wrote to him, asking what had happened,
would he be coming next week, had I done something wrong, had he stopped loving me? A month or more passed with no answer. I finally received a letter at the museum, the return address the winery in the Loire. The family’s housekeeper had found my name in his effects and was writing to tell me there had been an accident. I haven’t been much of a reader since.

I am so sorry, Isabeau said.

Madame T smiled. Don’t be, my dear. My paintings keep me company now.

The young woman cannot move.

Horrified at her own face on display, she recognizes someone else. The years of leaning over paintings in the cellar. The Dürers, her David. Her beloved Sofia. For an instant a beautiful woman looks back at her. As though the artist by the boat pond had found her: before her accident, before folding her mother’s magazines in the hall of mirrors, before a life draped in a scarf.

She blinks away the vision. Books continue to snow around her. Not knowing where to run, she begins to
collect bits of paper off the street, hoping the effort might distract anyone who might look her way.

The baker stands across the street. His knees are shaking; he fights to keep from collapsing. The bundle of books lies at his feet. With no strength left to pick them up, he turns toward the bakery.

He sees a young woman crouched in her summer dress, the loveliest pink, scooping handfuls of paper from the cobblestones, trying to keep her scarf from unravelling. Images rush at him: a woman reading in a garden, a portrait hanging in a bookstall, a face above a cellar door.

He whispers to himself: it is you.

A
mid the millions of words written on the subject, the memories of a first blush, the retelling of when-we-met stories, there was no logical explanation. Science and religion offered no biological causes or revealed truths. The snowflake beginning the avalanche remained unseen; the dewdrop that started the deluge could not be identified. Yet there were theories, plenty of those, concerning how one found love.

A boy-god’s arrow, some would claim, hitting its mark from behind a billowy cloud. A softening of the brain, others said, the pleasant result of too much
wine. The phases of the moon, the alignment of stars, the coming of spring. Forbidden fruits and tempting serpents. The light in a smiling eye, the dimple at the corner of a shy mouth.

Each of these, and countless more, had turned an invisible switch, quickening the pulse and raising the heat in the room. And all without warning: a glimpse of someone, for an instant then gone, as they stood on the opposite platform in the Métro. The bumping of shoulders on a crowded boulevard. A dropped umbrella rescued, shaken dry, returned with a bow. The inexplicable turn of a head in the Tuileries; an overheard story.

One’s thoughts were somewhere else when it happened: finding a place—in the attic, under the stairs, squaring a shelf—for the day’s purchases; or turning a page in an absorbing chapter; or contemplating the weave of a great kilim map. One minute alone in one’s own head, the next staring at someone they had never seen before, or had seen a hundred times, but now with a changed pair of eyes.

What was that? they might have wondered. A twinge in the stomach. A thump, an offbeat skip, a sudden pounding under the breastbone. Had the trees somehow turned greener? Had the breeze, together with the children’s boats, stopped moving across the pond?

It might have been the book she was reading, such an aubergine purple. The simple cut of her dress. The slope of her legs, ankles crossed, shoes off, heels resting on the edge of the pond, toes cooling in the breeze. How she held her head, turned down and away, with her face, what he could see of it, inches from the page.

Or the way she looked up from behind her scarf as he passed.

Octavio shuffled across the gravel in the Tuileries: preoccupied as always with keeping the day’s bundle from dragging; planning where each book would find its place in the cake-slice. As a gust of wind rippled the boat pond, he turned his head, saw a flash of colour. Peacock blues and greens, a corner of scarf caught in the breeze. A young woman was reading. Looking up from her book, she caught the end of the scarf, pulled it tightly to her cheek and looped it over her shoulder.

It couldn’t be her, he thought.

Octavio quickened his pace, his feet stumbling as they knocked against his bundle. Don’t run don’t run don’t run she’ll see you don’t trip keep your feet the trees into the trees watch out for the branches breathe just breathe it was impossible she couldn’t be.

Octavio concealed himself in the shade and pressed
his hand against his heaving chest. He watched as the woman closed her book. She slipped on her shoes, dragged her chair back to the edge of the trees. She checked the knot of her scarf, looked for a moment toward the trees, and walked back to the Louvre.

Octavio followed her. He stopped as she disappeared through the crowds milling around the museum’s entrance. Realizing the twine around his books was cutting into his hand, he dropped his bundle. Three or four volumes this day, in shades of tattered brown, came loose and tumbled to the cobbles.

He knew he had seen that face before—obscured in the shadow of a long lock of hair. It was all too unbelievable, he thought. She couldn’t be. The woman in the Tuileries could not be the portrait hanging in the bakery.
His
bakery.

The wind in the museum’s forecourt seemed suddenly to stop blowing.

For weeks Octavio returned to the shelter of the trees. The woman would appear as the sun reached midday. She would walk to the edge of the trees, find her chair and drag it to the boat pond. Every Sunday the same chair, the same spot. Every Sunday a book.

He needed only one word to imagine a hundred stories: she—was
a dancer; cooling her feet after a morning of twirls and leaps.

was the daughter of a sea captain, remembering her childhood as the toy boats crossed the pond.

was an empress hiding among her subjects, shielding her face with a scarf made from the silk of ten thousand worms. Five thousand green, five thousand blue.

was a teacher, a lover of learning, patient and gentle with her students.

She—was a reader.

He had a library.

It could not continue this way. The clammy palms, the butterfly stomach, the light-headedness. He could not keep watching her and do nothing. He had no idea how—if—he should approach her. He could ask Grenelle for advice but then where would he begin to explain? The fellow would enjoy the story, of that Octavio was certain, but it might be just another fit of imagination to the blind watchmaker. Customers at the bakery would laugh and pump his hand and offer enough contrary advice to make his head spin even faster. And the gossips would have it all over the eighth by the time the morning rush had settled. The thought of that gave Octavio the chills. Then he pictured his father on the bakery’s steps.

A beginning then, Emile whispered.

——

Henri Fournier laughed. You are quite mad, my friend.

Octavio said it wasn’t funny. Every detail of the drawing that now hung in the bakery he had seared in his mind. He had memorized the woman reading in the Tuileries. They were the same person. There was no mistake.

As you wish, Henri said. Then let us suppose that your brain has not run amok. Does this young woman know you have her portrait?

I don’t know. How could she know? Do you think she knows?

Have you introduced yourself?

Should I? How should I? What should I say? What would you say?

Take a breath, my friend. You could ask her what she is reading.

I couldn’t do that.

Why not?

She might ask me what I have been reading.

This woman, shall we say your woman, is obviously a lover of books. So you show her your day’s purchases. Or you tell her about my stall. I could certainly use the business.

We shall
not
say. She is not
my
woman.

The point is, you may not be a reader like she is, but there’s no finer storyteller. Share one of your tales with her.

I cannot speak to her.

Let the story do the talking.

I wouldn’t know where to start. Would she give me a word? What word? What if I don’t know the word she gives me? What if I can’t think of anything?

Henri rolled his eyes. Let us try a different approach, he said. Your woman sits in the same chair, correct?

Every Sunday.

Then leave something for her. Write her a note. Be anonymous if you’re going to be so nervous. Be mysterious, like her.

I can’t write something. I don’t know how—where to begin.

For goodness’ sake, a gift then. Flowers are a nice gesture. Or something from your bakery, a token only you could give. Or better yet a book. At least you know she likes those.

She would look up at him, shading her eyes to see who had interrupted her. There would be a moment’s pause. She would smile as he asked if she was enjoying her book. I am, she would say, but what are you hiding behind your back? He would bow and hand her his gift. Something from my library, mademoiselle. But I
have done nothing to deserve such generosity, monsieur. It made me think of you, he would say. I hope you’ll enjoy the pictures, they can tell remarkable stories all by themselves. She would take the parcel and feel the weight of a good book beneath its elegant wrapping paper, her hand lingering on his. Do you have a favourite of these pictures, monsieur? He would nod. Then please join me, she would say. My name is—

Next? Octavio said, catching his hand in the bakery’s till.

It was an easy thing to find her chair in the trees. Octavio pulled it to the boat pond and set it as she would have, facing the sun. The precise angle as the back legs dug into the gravel, the exact distance between chair and pond.

The morning promised a warm July day to come. A few children had already taken up their places around the pond. They were preoccupied with their boats, pushing them out, blowing against the little sails, coaxing them to make the great crossing.

He placed the package, wrapped in its iridescent paper, on the woman’s chair. He paused, wishing he had the courage to linger under the trees, to see her reaction. To turn and leave contented, knowing that she now knew he had found her.

A small mound of burnt scraps lies in one hand, the other grips the wrapped
Arabian Nights
.

Her accident had become a scar; the scar then a reflex. In turn it had become an instinct. How she might appear to others. Since the day the bandages were removed that instinct had clung to her. She had honed it like a sixth sense: the ability to step away, to look at herself with someone else’s eyes.

What they see now is a young woman in a plain dress and scuffed shoes, the poor thing sweating and covered
in ash, a beggar in need of a bath and a comb. Tears streak the soot on her face. What once might have been an elegant scarf, now faded, is wrapped in a tangled mess around her head. It hides nothing, enhances nothing, and only makes her appear all the more ridiculous.

Yet she had been beautiful once. In an artist’s eyes.

Enough, she thinks.

T
he sun slid past noon as Isabeau arrived in the Tuileries. She stood by the boat pond, trying to unravel this curiosity. A chair—was it hers?—was already at her customary place. A parcel, beautifully wrapped, lay on the seat. Someone must have forgotten it, she thought. She listened for the sound of footsteps on the gravel, someone running toward her. A mother and son perhaps, their arms waving frantically, eyes wide with worry. You see, Maman? the boy would gasp. I knew someone would find it. Pardon us, mademoiselle, his mother would say. The boy can be such a
trial sometimes, but he refused to get on the Métro until we looked.

Isabeau picked up the parcel. She could feel a book inside, a familiar and comfortable weight. The perfect gift, she thought. It would be a shame were someone to lose it. She waited a few minutes more. People strolling around the boat pond paid no attention to her. Finally she sat and pulled her own book from her bag. After a few pages without asterisk or exclamation point or a circled paragraph, Isabeau gave up. She could not concentrate. She looked around the boat pond, then into the trees. No one was coming.

She took the parcel from under her chair and unwrapped it, taking care to not tear the paper. She flipped the book over, read the title. She put it to her nose. There was a vague odour of dust. Isabeau fanned the pages, stopping here and there at a colour plate. Genies, flying carpets, ships teetering at the edge of the world.

She rummaged through the wrapping paper for a card, something that might say who had received such a present, or who had been so generous in the giving. Again she flipped through the book. Inside the back cover she found a tiny, scrawled notation:

From one child to another, Isabeau thought. She looked up to see a groundsman raking the gravel near the trees. Their eyes met and Isabeau held her breath, thinking she had been found out, that he knew the book was not hers. The groundsman turned back to his work. Isabeau rewrapped the
Arabian Nights
and slid it into her bag.